The Tooth Fairy and other Childhood Evils

When I was little, the world was magical. I was certain that one day I would look out of my bedroom window in our two-bedroom trailer, and instead of seeing the corrugated steel of the side of the building my dad worked in, I would see a portal into a land filled with unicorns and breakfast for dinner and no bees or wasps. I thought I was a ballerina-opera-singer-firewoman-princess-peasant that would be taken to a far-off land where I didn't have to eat my mom's broccoli surprise anymore.

But of course, in a magical land, there are good things (the super cool rocks I piled under the porch that had swirly sparklies) and there are bad things (spiders).

I was about four when my dad first introduced the idea of bad things coming into the house and taking stuff I liked. I had previously been dancing about in our inch of yard, running from the grassy yard to the other rock and broken glass filled yard. The grassy yard we shared with a nice couple in the trailer to the left of us, and the rock and glass yard we shared with seven guys that also worked for the city in the corrugated steel building my dad worked in. The yard was an awesome place where I could pretend I was with Winnie the Pooh or the fairies. (I liked to jump off the steps of the back porch, singing the Winnie the Pooh song and for some reason, if I jumped really far I was better than Winnie the Pooh and therefore better than Christopher Robin. I was an only child, and weird games were all I had).

There was nothing better than being better than Winnie the Pooh. Anyway...I came back inside after an hour or so of thinking how great I was to see that the hideous orange and dark brown couch that had always been in the living room was gone. In its place was a slightly less hideous off-white couch, with ugly furniture blues and browns crisscrossing all over it. I loved it, but I missed the orange couch. I turned to my dad and asked where it had gone.

My dad is very tall and has what some might call "a commanding presence". And a mustache. A power mustache. Everything he told me was absolute truth. He abused this power often. It might have been the mustache. "The couch trolls came and took it away in the night."

Now, who knows what else they might come and take away? My dad's chair? Where would he sit? The coffee table I liked to pretend was my jungle-gym despite frequent reminders that that was not its purpose? My bed? While I was still in it? From that point forward, there was good and there was evil. Whatever came in the night and took things was definitely evil. Good was whatever I liked.

Around the second grade, everyone started losing their teeth. I was consumed with jealousy. Why did they get to lose their teeth and I didn't? All of my teeth were healthy and straight and holding on to my gums for their preciously white lives. Stupid teeth. I wanted gaping holes! I wanted three teeth in row to be gone like one of the boys in my class, the stupid kid with his many missing teeth. He looked like he should be in a family picture from the Appalachias, the lucky SOB. The school pictures that year were mortifying. Everyone else smiled and showed off the gaps through which they drank their juice, and I tried to keep my lips closed but the photographer would have none of it.

And so it went on. I heard more and more about the Tooth Fairy, a magical being that left money for teeth. At first this idea seemed pretty benign, so I took no issue with it. Then one day, I read a terrifying book about the Tooth Fairy.

Does this not strike you with fear? The unsuspecting child is about to have her jaws brutally ripped out and the fairy has almost no expression on her face!

She didn't just come in your room and make sure there was a tooth underneath your pillow. She stole the tooth an paid you for it! She came into your room, stole valued property, made sure it was from your mouth the tooth had fallen from, and then paid for the goods! What if the tooth fairy wanted more? What if she was broke? According to the book she used the teeth as currency in the great fairy world where children's tears and sweat and teeth counted as money. This was even scarier than the couch trolls. What if one day she just decided to take the entire contents of my mouth with her?

There was one book that thought of all the different things the tooth fairy might need our teeth for. Art. Tiaras. Money. Necklaces. I thought she might actually be wearing my classmate's ill-gotten teeth around her neck as a trophy of her nocturnal terror-sprees. I had a tooth fall out and lived in absolute fear that she might come into my room that night and steal all my teeth. Perhaps my teeth were too small for her teeth art, and she needed to take a few more to make up for it!

I started losing my teeth and losing them quickly. I finally reached the age where I was embarrassed to mention I was still losing teeth, and the embarrassment wasn't even lucrative, as my parents stopped paying me for losing my teeth after I lost the front ones.

There is still good and evil in this world and though I am no longer afraid of the tooth fairy, I'll admit, that if there's a loud sound outside of the front door late at night, my first thought is usually couch trolls.